Emirates Named ‘World’s Best Airline’ at 2016 Skytrax World Airline Awards

Patrick Brannelly Divisional Vice President, Customer Experience receiving the award from Edward Plaisted, CEO of Skytrax. Also pictured on the left is Lord Deighton, Non-Executive Chairman of Heathrow Airport.

Emirates on Tuesday was named the World’s Best Airline 2016 at the prestigious 2016 Skytrax World Airline Awards, in addition to scooping up the awards for World’s Best Inflight Entertainment for a record 12th consecutive year, and Best Airline in the Middle East. The award ceremony took place at the Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom.

Based on the results of the largest airline passenger satisfaction survey in the industry, the World’s Best Airline Awards are considered a global benchmark of airline excellence.

“We are honoured to be recognised by the prestigious Skytrax awards… The fact that these awards are based on the direct feedback from passengers is gratifying and wonderful recognition for all of the hard work that’s gone into creating the Emirates experience”, said Sir Tim Clark, President Emirates Airline.

This year’s Skytrax awards were based on a total of 19.2 million completed surveys covering 280 airlines, by customers hailing from more than 104 countries. The Skytrax survey measures quality standards across 41 key performance indicators of front-line products and services in the airline industry.

Skytrax World Airline Awards 2016 – Emirates was named the World’s Best Airline 2016 and scooped up the awards for World’s Best Inflight Entertainment for a record 12th consecutive year, and Best Airline in the Middle East.

This is the fourth time Emirates has won the top accolade since the airline awards were introduced 15 years ago; the airline won the first ever Skytrax World’s Best Airline in 2001, again in 2002 and in 2013. In total, Emirates has won a total of 20 Skytrax World Airline Awards since 2001.

Emirates has an extensive network that has grown to offer its customers a choice of 154 destinations in 81 countries across six continents, with convenient connections through its hub in Dubai. The airline operates one of the world’s youngest modern wide-body fleets.

Over the past 12 months, Emirates has rolled out a number of new product and service investments, including the unveiling of a new 777-300ER Business Class seat; expanding its global Emirates Lounge network to 39 with the opening of new facilities in Cape Town; launching new children’s toys and activity kits both on board and in the lounges and new amenity kit bags for First and Business Class travellers, investing over US$140 million in its wine programme for all cabin classes in 2015 alone, and much more.